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Community and environment

We work as hard at making a positive impact on the world around us as we do at providing the best service to our clients. We do this by continually investing in our local community and preserving our environment.

We aim to be an example of best practice in all of our Community and Environment activities - the full backing of the firm's partnership enables us to achieve this.

An introduction to our environmental initiative from two members of our Environment Committee

Jeff: "We have a very strong commitment to environmental management and that is manifested through a committee of interested people from all levels of our work force, from the most junior through to the partnership.

The purpose of the environment committee is to create an environment to galvanise the enthusiasm of the people and the staff in this place who care about these things."

Edward: "The commitment comes right from the top: the senior partner has signed up to an environmental policy which he thinks, and we all think, is very important."

Jeff: "It’s unique, actually, in our organisation to have a committee that’s constituted in this way and I think it’s very empowering for those people that are on it to feel that they are taking part in the decisions about how we run our business."

Edward: "The other thing I think we should say is, of course, it’s something that’s increasingly important to our clients and we’re very keen that we align what we do with their interests."

Edward: "We’ve introduced a scheme of 'Keep cups' where people can, for a very small sum, get hold of a recycleable plastic cup to use in the canteen. And that’s been a significant success and, obviously, we don’t have exact numbers, but we think at least 15,000 disposable cups have been spared as a result of a little initiative like that, over the years."

Jeff: "We have a very sophisticated system of recycling our food waste and our packaging and minimising, occasionally to the point of zero, any waste that goes to landfill.

On the cycling front we have greater-than-the-national-average numbers of employees who regularly cycle to work. It’s one of those things that is perpetuated by the enthusiasm of people who do it - most corridors are blessed by somebody in lycra shorts at some point in the day."

Edward: "To date, we’ve managed a 29% reduction from our original baseline, in terms of energy use, which is pretty good but we’re not satisfied with that, and we’re looking for 2 or 3% reductions per year to take us to an end target achievement of 40%."

Jeff: "Yes, it’s an interesting question how all this has been achieved. And, I think the answer is that many of the people who work in this organisation are intellectually curious and challenging and I think, really, the common theme has been that, when we’ve understood how things were done, we’ve repeatedly asked the question, why does it have to be like that?

Ultimately, we all have to change the way that we behave within the office environment. The long-term challenge is to make it…everyone see it as their problem rather than our problem: the firm’s problem."